More Pressing Than Kosovo

OUR VIEWS

President Clinton Should Concern Himself More With Domestic And Global Crises And Less With Kosovo's Strife.

October 8, 1998|By Brown

Like the manic rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, the Clinton administration runs around, declaring that time is running out - in Yugoslavia's strife-torn Kosovo province.

The only solution the White House seems capable of mustering for that civil conflict points toward military intervention by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Time is running out, all right - but not for Kosovo. The clock is ticking for President Bill Clinton to deal with impending impeachment hearings and with the nation's well-being, as the global economy founders.

Either challenge would rise to a level sufficient to dominate most presidents' attention.

Most immediately, the administration's efforts should focus, in particular, on the economic worries. If the world slumps into widespread recession, at the very least that development will diminish the United States' growth rate. In the worst-case scenario, that could pull this nation back to the not-so-distant economic doldrums of the early 1990s.

Combined, those challenges should make incidents such as Kosovo appear infinitesimal - and the United States should view the disruption there that way.

This nation should examine Kosovo both for what it is and what it isn't.

It is a messy internal situation with long historical roots in which an ethnic and religious minority clamors for greater autonomy and uses violence to accent its aims. The Yugoslav government, reluctant to cede authority, has cracked down excessively, leaving a trail of human-rights abuses.

Thus, the world has grounds to protest and shoulders a responsibility to do so.

Kosovo presents no global crisis, though. It's not a problem that threatens an entire region. It's not an issue of the magnitude that the Clinton administration would have people believe. And it's not a critical U.S. concern.

The burden of dealing with Kosovo falls principally to Europe. Europeans should take the lead in a military intervention, if one becomes necessary.

Yet Mr. Clinton persists in dominating the saber-rattling. American planes likely would constitute most of the aircraft that would bomb targets in Yugoslavia. Some officials even have talked of sending U.S. ground troops into that country. And then what?

Mr. Clinton appears to have stapled that dangerous piecemeal strategy together while monitoring polls and casting an eye on the upcoming general elections.

Such an approach could leave the United States hip-deep in an unresolvable problem long after elections and the president's worries become history.

Americans should guard their sons and daughters in uniform and their other military assets more closely.

When Americans die in conflicts that warrant U.S. involvement, their pine boxes return to the United States amid understanding of the justness of their mission.

In the case of Kosovo, however, those boxes would be shrouded in misgiving.